February

17

How good was this year’s Spring Festival?

by Welcome Chinese

The weeklong state holiday for the Lunar New Year 2017 recorded a 7% growth in outbound trips by Chinese nationals, with 6,15 million travelers. Official data has been released by the China National Tourism Administration confirming the constant upward trend of the tourism sector. About 2.98 billion journeys, most of them by car, are expected to be made within the country during the whole period of the travel rush, between January 13 and February 21.

Favorite travel destinations in past years have been maintained, placing Thailand, Japan and South Korea as the top three. WeChat, the all-in-one social network with more than 800 million users, has also released some interesting stats: the above-mentioned destinations all accept some form of payment with the app itself, namely WeChat Pay, facilitating the growing trend of “cashless” tourism across Chinese borders.

According to a recent report published byMastercard, Chinese overseas journeys are forecast to grow by 50,5% in a five-year period, jumping from 68.7 million in 2016 to 103.4 million by 2021. The average growth is expected to reach 8,5% year-over-year. This forecast exceeds China’s expected GDP growth in the same period, put at a cautionary 6% annually. By comparison, the United States registered 32,8 million overseas journeys in 2016 and a 6,3% growth year-over-year.